Tag Archives: social security

Ah… retirement. That time in life when you’ve worked hard for long enough to “deserve” time to sit back and relax – maybe play some golf, or take classes to reignite an old hobby, or travel the world. Today retirement is so engrained in our culture as a natural phase of life that it’s easy to forget that it is a very modern concept.

In 1881, Otto von Bismark, a conservative minister president of Prussia, came up with an idea to have older adults not have to work to the very last second of their lives. Eight years later the German government started to provide a retirement system for anyone over the age of 70. At the time, not many people made it that long.

Across the Atlantic in the US, retirement was a fledgling idea. Municipal employees started to receipt public pensions in the mid 1800s and in 1975 American Express started to offer private pensions. It wasn’t until 1935 when the Social Security act passed and the official retirement age in the US was 65. (Life expectancy for men was 58 at the time.)Continue reading →

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The anti-minimalist: I'm the absolute worst with money. I have a shopping addiction. That's exactly why this blog exists. HECC is not a typical personal finance blog. I started it in 2007 to hold myself accountable for binge spending, a dropping networth, and lack of overall fiscal literacy. 10 years later, had achieved a networth of over $500k. Now my goal is to hit $1M by 40. Recently married and with my first kid on the way, things are about to get... interesting. I write about the intersection of mental health and money, spending & investing, and millennial personal finance.